1,911 research outputs found

    Neuromorphic hardware for somatosensory neuroprostheses

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    In individuals with sensory-motor impairments, missing limb functions can be restored using neuroprosthetic devices that directly interface with the nervous system. However, restoring the natural tactile experience through electrical neural stimulation requires complex encoding strategies. Indeed, they are presently limited in effectively conveying or restoring tactile sensations by bandwidth constraints. Neuromorphic technology, which mimics the natural behavior of neurons and synapses, holds promise for replicating the encoding of natural touch, potentially informing neurostimulation design. In this perspective, we propose that incorporating neuromorphic technologies into neuroprostheses could be an effective approach for developing more natural human-machine interfaces, potentially leading to advancements in device performance, acceptability, and embeddability. We also highlight ongoing challenges and the required actions to facilitate the future integration of these advanced technologies

    Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law

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    This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    3D Innovations in Personalized Surgery

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    Current practice involves the use of 3D surgical planning and patient-specific solutions in multiple surgical areas of expertise. Patient-specific solutions have been endorsed for several years in numerous publications due to their associated benefits around accuracy, safety, and predictability of surgical outcome. The basis of 3D surgical planning is the use of high-quality medical images (e.g., CT, MRI, or PET-scans). The translation from 3D digital planning toward surgical applications was developed hand in hand with a rise in 3D printing applications of multiple biocompatible materials. These technical aspects of medical care require engineers’ or technical physicians’ expertise for optimal safe and effective implementation in daily clinical routines.The aim and scope of this Special Issue is high-tech solutions in personalized surgery, based on 3D technology and, more specifically, bone-related surgery. Full-papers or highly innovative technical notes or (systematic) reviews that relate to innovative personalized surgery are invited. This can include optimization of imaging for 3D VSP, optimization of 3D VSP workflow and its translation toward the surgical procedure, or optimization of personalized implants or devices in relation to bone surgery

    Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management

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    This book is a reprint of the Special Issue 'Tradition and Innovation in Construction Project Management' that was published in the journal Buildings

    Exploring Compassion-Driven Interaction: Bridging Buddhist Theory and Contemplative Practice Through Arts-led Research-through-Design

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    Compassion cultivation focuses on developing a genuine concern for others and a willingness to alleviate their suffering. As understandings of the benefits of compassion cultivation on wellbeing have evolved, an increasing interest in designing technologies for this context have followed. However, while scientific research focuses on measuring and evaluating compassion, designerly understandings of compassion informing human-computer interaction have been less explored. We are currently confronted with huge global challenges and our entanglement with technology brings paradoxes and existential tensions related to wellbeing and human flourishing. Viewing technologies as mediators of values and morality, human-computer interaction has a stake in shaping our possible futures. A shift in the field to welcoming a plurality of worldviews, invites opportunities to authentically integrate knowledge from ancient wisdom traditions into how and why we design. This research aims to advance understandings of compassion cultivation for designing technologies by developing novel approaches to research inspired by Buddhist philosophy and practice. This thesis draws upon an arts-led research-through-design approach and spiritual practice. The findings and insights from the studies contribute primarily to the areas of soma design, first-person research and design for wellbeing. The main contributions to knowledge are design guidelines emerging from three case studies: Understanding Tonglen, Wish Happiness, and Inner Suchness comprising one autoethnography and two concept-driven design artefacts for public exhibition. While in the act of researching, the contemplative practitioner-researcher, a research persona, emerged to support authentic engagement and embodied understandings of the dynamic unfolding processes of the practice. A contemplative framework to train self-observation and the concept of designerly gaze were developed to help investigate the phenomenon

    Subjectivity, nature, existence: Foundational issues for enactive phenomenology

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    This thesis explores and discusses foundational issues concerning the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and the enactive approach to cognitive science, with the aim of clarifying, developing, and promoting the project of enactive phenomenology. This project is framed by three general ideas: 1) that the sciences of mind need a phenomenological grounding, 2) that the enactive approach is the currently most promising attempt to provide mind science with such a grounding, and 3) that this attempt involves both a naturalization of phenomenology and a phenomenologization of the concept of nature. More specifically, enactive phenomenology is the project of pursuing mutually illuminative exchanges between, on the one hand, phenomenological investigations of the structures of lived experience and embodied existence and, on the other, scientific accounts of mind and life – in particular those framed by theories of biological self-organization. The thesis consists of two parts. Part one is an introductory essay that seeks to clarify some of enactive phenomenology’s overarching philosophical commitments by tracing some of its historical roots. Part two is a compilation of four articles, each of which intervenes in a different contemporary debate relevant to the dissertation’s project
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